Cassini Scientist for a Day 2012 Competition - Results

4 March 2013

Students from across Europe have been selected as winners of the Cassini Scientist for a Day 2012 competition. Coordinated by ESA, national competitions were held in several European countries, including Poland, Spain and Greece, with more than 1000 entries. An equivalent competition was run by NASA for schools in the US.

Cassini–Huygens

The Cassini–Huygens mission is an international project between NASA, ESA and Italy’s ASI space agency to study the giant planet Saturn and its rings and moons. The Cassini spacecraft entered orbit around Saturn in 2004 after a journey of nearly seven years from Earth. In January 2005, the Huygens probe landed on the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Cassini continues to provide an abundance of data to scientists and a small amount of the spacecraft’s time has been set aside to help young people learn about this fascinating world.

Secondary school students were invited to study three possible targets for Cassini to take images of, and to decide which one they thought would yield the best science results. The three targets for students to choose from were:

Pan, the shepherd moon

The F ring

Saturn

Students were then asked to write an essay justifying their choice in their native language to be judged by panels of national experts.

The winners will receive an ESA_Cassini goodie bag and all entrants will receive a certificate of participation. The winners are listed below by country and the winning entries can be seen by following the links on the right.

If this article has inspired you or your school to participate in an ESA competition, please check the ESA webpages. We will be running the Cassini Scientist for a Day competition again in late 2013, so watch this space!

Contact us

If you have any questions about the competition, or want to know more about Science Education at ESA, contact Joanna Holt at SciEdu@esa.int

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